This power-popping ode to loneliness is the one-man-band opus most basement-dwelling indie rock nerds think they could make if they felt like it. Mop-topped and horn-rimmed, Chicago by-way-of Florida singer Devin Davis is ambitious, but it's not necessarily his nasty trombone or theremin chops that make his debut solo album better than your local mom-and-pop clerk's self-described "Bolan meets Pollard" pop masterpiece. Instead, it's his knowing way around a walloping chorus and his welcome sense of restraint and economy that allow said hooks to live for many hum-worthy listens.
A loosely conceptual record, Lonely People of the World, Unite! sees Davis embodying a varied cast of, well, lonely people-- or, as it happens, lonely ghosts or lonely turtles. "Iron Woman" doubles as the record's seafaring jumping-off point and its most distinguishable, immediate moment. "It's hard to live in a basement and not get carried away," sings Davis on the Guided By Springsteen stomper. This lone wolf mostly takes his own advice to heart. Recording the vast majority of the album by himself, Davis doesn't often succumb to vain overindulgence and his piled-on retro-instrumentation punches up more than it bogs down.
The singer's limited yelp hinders some songs from reaching Kinks-esque fantasia, but on "Turtle and the Flightless Bird", Davis' vulnerability matches his hard-shelled counterpart's grounded hopefulness. The track finds the title pair in an unlikely partnership, and it reads like a heartbreaking fable.
Davis' less quirky, more obviously derivative endeavors fall flat. "Moon Over Shark City" isn't as much homage to Bowie's "Suffragette City" as an inexcusable copy-- all the way down to the pounding piano and "woo-hoo" back-ups. And the power ballad "Sandie" slips under its own well-worn bombast.
The exclamation point at the end of this album's title is a testament to Davis' sense of mutual togetherness. Just as he looked to organs, drums, and gongs to quell his own isolation in a new city, many of the characters in his tales of woe are buoyed by the songwriter's optimism. Loneliness has rarely sounded so celebratory or inviting.
